


A Wolf Night

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 07:18:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12552104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Based on a photo of motel in the desert.





	A Wolf Night

The whump of the windmills throbs in the night sky. Their skeletal forms line the ridge of the hills like the hackles rising on a wolf’s neck. If she closes her eyes she can see its bared teeth, smell its bitter, bloody breath, hear its heavy panting. The landscape is looming here, bearing down on her, surrounding her like she’s the predated, the quarry. But it’s not her they’re looking for. It’s Mulder. And she needs to find him before they do.  
She stands on the balcony that runs around the second storey of the motel. The wood of the balustrade is freshly painted and the brush strokes are swollen under the fingers. She pushes against them, relishing the crack and splinter. White fragments dot her hands and she rubs them off, watching them scatter like Mulder’s sunflower seed shells. She steps on them, just to feel the crush under her feet, the sound, so that she can focus on him again.  
There is rain in the air. The sky is laden with the unshed and she feels the weight of it physically. She hasn’t cried, hasn’t yelled, hasn’t slept in days. She has pushed through because it’s the thing to do. The thing she always does. She keeps going, she is like the wolf, dogged and determined to track down its prey, no matter how little fuel there is to energise her. Mulder was running and she will not stop walking in his footsteps until she can bring him home safe.  
The vacancy sign crackles like the electricity that’s sparking in the stormy air. Everything here is charged. If she peels back her clothing and lets her naked skin free to the elements she knows her body hair would rise, her skin would stipple, her breath would come is short and hard bursts. Her heart would race, her nerves pique, her blood thrum along her veins pulled along like the ropes on a yacht, setting her to sail the ocean she has to cross.  
Across the parking lot, a whip of wind sends grey dust into a skitter, rattling crisp leaves in its vortex. She walks to the stairs, treads down them, watching the crease in her boots, feeling the cool weight of her weapon in her pocket. She swallows back the fear with the taste of gas; a car is reversing out of a bay and the driver is pushing down on the pedal so that the roar of the engine obliterates the breathing of the windmills. She hesitates. Instinct prickles at the base of her throat. Funny how the sceptic and the scientist has come to rely on the sense and intuition. She pushes her smile away. When she finds him, she’ll tell him and he’ll smile at her like she’s the only thing in his life that makes him happy and they’ll lay down together and remember what life is like outside of the hunt.  
The car moves back, slowly at first, its lights like animal eyes in the darkness, and as she steps off the last stair to cross to the motel lobby it makes a sudden charge and arc, turning so that its front bumper clips her lower legs. She sees herself falling, her left arm flying out to protect her against the hard surface, she sees her coat flap open and over her, covering her right arm and upper body, exposing her lower half to the cooling breeze. She hears coins chinking over the surface, she’d had them ready for the vending machine, dreaming of chocolate and soda to keep her going through the night. She watches the feet of the men, notes their expensive Italian leather shoes, the careful stitching around the front, the chestnut colour. She listens to their voices, deciphering their age and accents, but she can’t see their faces. She tries to roll over, but her coat is trapping her, pressing her arms down so she’s strait-jacketed and vulnerable.  
“Get her in the car,” one of them says and she scrambles for the kerb, moving painfully slowly against the fabric, trying to shuck it off her shoulders. Pain zings around her shins, she can feel gravel digging into the raw flesh there. She hisses as a hand pulls her hair so hard her eyes water and she reaches for her forehead to stifle the stinging pain.  
“Leave me alone,” she huffs, but a brute arm folds around her middle and she scissors her legs as she’s lifted off the ground. A hand clamps over her mouth, skin like sandpaper. She flares her nostrils to breathe, rocks her head back trying to connect with her abductor but just clips his chin before he launches her into the back seat. She rolls over on the seat, fingers digging into the stubby fabric, dust particles and dirt sticking under her nails. She pulls the handle; it’s cold and unyielding in her hands. Her heart hammers in the well under her neck. She sees the windmills, upright and still spinning in their unending rhythm as the car steals into the landscape with a low and threatening hum.


End file.
